InRangeTV High Desert Brutality 2025: Fire For Effect

Featured Image credit: Jane Bird

This isn’t the first InRangeTV Brutality match I’ve written about, and it won’t be the last. Why? Because these matches keep getting better. High Desert Brutality 2025 was a match for the record books.  

WHAT IS BRUTALITY

First and foremost, InRangeTV Brutality events are a community-building event for everyone involved. Nowhere else in the shooting community will you find a more welcoming or more open set of people. 

Second to that, Brutality is more training event than it is a competition. Not every stage is perfectly balanced to be “fair”. Every stage is hard, much harder than almost any other match will offer. This year’s match was even harder, given par times were increased to a full 300 seconds. 

These two aspects of Brutality are what keep me and most others coming back. The community and the awesome stages.

WE DIDN’T DID START THE FIRE

The next time your friend gets upset because a range or BLM land closes due to fire risk, send them this article. The fact is, brush fires are extremely easy to spark off, and even when you do everything right, sometimes you still burn down half the range.

Less than 2 hours into the first day of HDB 2025 a fire sparked off on one of the stages that not only closed the range for the day, but would go on to burn about 225 acres in just a few hours. 

The steel target was over 300 yards away from the shooter, the ground around the target was cleared of brush, and the shooter was using standard 55gr FMJ ammo from a major manufacturer (this was confirmed by the match director and several ROs after checking the rest of the shooter’s magazine and even pulling and cutting bullets to make sure). 

Despite everything, the fire still started a solid 50 feet away from the target being shot..

Thankfully, no one was hurt by the fire, and no structures were lost or damaged. Match staff acted quickly to attempt to contain the fire, but with how dry the brush was and the wind, it spread quickly. Emergency fire crews were able to contain it with the help of water bombers.

Not a great start to the weekend, but sh!t happens. The result of the fire was the match having to reduce the number of stages from 7 to 4 in order to get everyone through Sunday. Even with the shorter match, it was a long day for shooters and especially the ROs.

Special thanks to all the staff at Brutality for how they handled the fire and the fallout. Every RO was calm, professional, and acted decisively to keep competitors safe and accounted for. 

LONG RANGE BRUTALITY

High Desert Brutality is specifically the “long range” brutality due to being able to stretch stages out to 600+ yards. The average rifle target was over 100 yards, with a good 1/3rd of targets being between 250 and 500 yards.

Is that “long range” as far as PRS or NRL: Hunter is concerned? Maybe not, but for a 2-gun action match — that’s pretty far. If you don’t know your dope, you’re in for a rough day. Add in the heat, the flies, the brush fire, 300-second par times, and if you’re insane enough to do it, shooting in Trooper or one of the Armored divisions, and this 2-gun match gets real spicy.

Even with the match only having 4 stages due to the fire, these stages were awesome. And hard. Because of the difficulty of the stages, par times were extended to 300 seconds (5 minutes). 

Stage one starts you off with a high-value hostage target at 200 yards using a perfectly zeroed stage gun. Then the fun really began. Ripping down range in an apocalypse dune buggy, shooting at bonus targets, is hands down the coolest thing I’ve done at a match. Some precision shots from inside the buggy, sprinting, and more precision shots from the buggy made it clear this wasn’t your normal kind of 2-gun match.

Stage two dialed up the difficulty with a coyote bonus target at 615 yards. Shooters only had 3 shots to attempt to hit the ‘yote before having to move on. After that, targets at 100 to 500 yards had to be engaged before sprinting to another bay for more targets between 100 and 450 yards. On the way to the second bay, there was a melee target to stab. Awesome.

Stage three calmed things down a little with targets at only 100ish yards and the dreaded rifle spinner. And in true Brutality fashion, the spinner hated to spin. Pistol targets involved a trench run and retrieving keys to use in the stage prop. Having to keep track of 4 keys and color match them to the locks required to continue the stage sounds easy, but it’s not as simple when you’re gassed out and overheated. 

Stage four was long, but made longer if you missed shots. Starting with a stage PCC and given 7 rounds to clear 6 plates on a plate rack at 50 yards, clearing the rack made the stage easier and required one less station for you to shoot. So don’t miss. After the rack was multiple rifle arrays at 100-150 yards, a barricade to shoot through, and a lot of running. More pistol targets shot in sequence and finished off with another round of rifle shooting made this stage the longest and most endurance-heavy stage of the match. Not only did you have to just keep going, you also needed to make hits are some fairly small targets while doing it.

Just 4 stages out of the 7 planned was a bummer, but even only shooting 4 stages made for a great match. I can only imagine how legendary the match would have been with the full 7 planned.

Icing on the cake was two bonus stages for shooters that had fuel left in their tank after the 4 official stages. The first bonus stage was a Kasarda drill requiring the shooter to yeet kettlebells downrange for 50 yards while clearing targets. New to Brutality was the Sinistral Rifleman Skills Check, involving shooting spinner targets with both rifle and pistol.

Shooters were welcome to shoot these bonus stages as many times as they wanted to try for a better score.

RECOMMENDED GEAR

Shooting in both Heavy Rifle and Light Armored using an AR-10 and AR-15 configured very similarly, I had a great time getting to see the strengths and weaknesses of both side-by-side.

A full breakdown of the rifles and lessons learned is coming soon, but one takeaway I strongly recommend is the use of a bipod and knowing how to use it well. For these longer ranged stages, getting stable and prone helps a lot.

Have good dope and spend a little more on your ammo than you normally would. Targets are fairly large even at 500 yards, but you’ll want at least 2 MOA or better. Consistent ammo will also help make hits.

Because of the range involved, magnified optics of some flavor are highly recommended. I’ve been slow to adopt LPVOs but for this match, I used two Vortex LPVOS — the Razor Gen 3 1-10x and the Razor Gen 2 1-6x. Both performed wonderfully, but the FFP and better reticle of the Gen 3 really shone in this match. 

6.5 Creedmoor was provided by Barnes shooting their Precision Match OTM 140gr. 10-round group measured with a Garmin chronograph had this ammo at 31 FPS extreme spread and only 10.7 FPS STD DEV. My Franken rifle with the Faxon Firearms gunner profile 20” barrel holds 1.1 MOA with this ammo. 

For 5.56 NATO, AmmunitionToGo.com provided 62gr Magtech. While not a “precision” round, the 62gr Magtech was my choice because it’s better ballistics than M193 55gr, but not the insane cost of something like the 75gr+ offerings. For only 45 cents per round, this did pretty damn well. 10-rounds over the Garmin chrono had 74 FPS extreme spread and 22.3 FPS STD DEV. Not amazing, but for bulk ammo, that’s pretty solid.

Brutality has a long list of divisions to try, both modern and historical. For modern, I think Heavy Rifle is going to be my favorite for High Desert. Rarely can full-power cartridges compete against intermediate cartridges in a 2-gun match, but this is one match where .308 Win and especially 6.5 Creedmoor really stand out.

In the historical divisions, Space Cowboy looked incredibly fun with optics on lever-action guns. This is one that I’ll have to try next time I shoot High Desert Brutality.

LOOSE ROUNDS

InRangeTV Brutality events keep pushing what a 2-gun match can be and are shining examples of what happens when a determined and dedicated group of people can accomplish. No matter what quirks of nature occur or what new challenge is faced, the shooters and staff at Brutality matches embrace the suck and push themselves to reach new goals.

If you’re looking to push yourself, there is no better match for it than one of the InRangeTV Brutality matches.

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